“I suppose I’m up there once a month, sometimes more often.”
“We don’t need an alibi from you,” Stone said.
“Then, pray tell, what do you need?”
“We’d like to know who else Brix Kendrick was seeing.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but I am not privy to that information. Frankly, Brix did not seem to be the sort who would have affairs.”
“And yet you were having an affair with him,” Stone pointed out.
“I mean, multiple affairs,” she replied. She still had not admitted her own affair, explicitly.
“What else can you tell us about Brix?” Stone asked.
“Gentlemen, I’m afraid I have nothing else to tell you.” She looked at a diamond wristwatch adorning her slender wrist. “And I’m afraid I have forgotten another appointment for this hour. Will you gentlemen excuse me? I’m sorry about the tea.”
She stood up, and the maid appeared as if on cue. “This way, gentlemen,” she said.
Milly Hart turned and left the room without another word.
Stone and Dino found themselves in the entry hall, waiting for the elevator.
“I wonder what she’s hiding,” Stone said.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Dino asked.
“Get what?”
“Milly Hart is a hooker.”
21
They got into the elevator. “Why on earth do you think Milly Hart is a hooker?” Stone asked.
“Stone, sometimes you are so fucking naive.”
“What?”
“We go to see a woman without an appointment. She walks in clad in Hollywood lingerie, then, while we are questioning her, she suddenly remembers another appointment.”
The elevator doors opened, and, standing before them was Muffy Brandon’s husband. They got off, and he got on.
“Are you getting the picture now?” Dino asked.
“I believe so,” Stone said. “I’m sorry to be so slow on the uptake.”
“The No,y ze="3">“question is, how did Brixton Kendrick afford a high-priced hooker like Milly Hart? He was a government employee, for God’s sake.”
“Private income?” Stone asked.
“Not according to his son. Remember meeting him?”
“Ah, yes, and he was terribly concerned about getting the max out of selling the old man’s house.”
“And we’ve gotta be talking about at least a grand a pop for an hour of Milly Hart’s time.”
“I don’t have any experience with rates for hookers,” Stone said.
“Well, you’ve gotta admit that Milly is a rare beauty, especially in a town full of women like Betty Trask and Muffy Brandon.”
“I can’t argue with that. I don’t suppose Brix Kendrick would have any trouble wanting her. Except that his days already seemed pretty full.”
“Yeah,” Dino said, “he must have been short of time with Muffy waiting for him in the afternoons, and he couldn’t have been seeing somebody else in the evenings, because he was busy being an ideal husband. The question is, how could he get it up that often, at his age?”
“How old was he?” Stone asked.
“According to the FBI report, both he and Mimi were fifty-one, the age at which half of American men have what is politely called ‘erectile dysfunction.’”
“Well, Brix was obviously not having those problems, because he was keeping at least two ladies happy on a regular basis.”
“Maybe his wife had cut him off, for one reason or another,” Dino suggested. “And believe me, they don’t really need a reason.”
“Horniness is not a motive for murder, especially when he couldn’t possibly have been horny.”
“Shame is a motive for suicide, though,” Dino pointed out.
“I guess,” Stone said.
They got into the car.
“Where to?” Dino asked.
“Home, James. We’ve got nobody else to talk to, except each other.”
Teddy Fay and Lauren Cade finished cleaning their hangar apartment and got into a shower together.
“You know,” she said, soaping Teddy’s back, “this place isn’t half bad.”
“Have I ever asked you to live in a place that was half bad?”
“No, you’ve done very well by me in that regard. Tell me, what are we going to do with ourselves in D.C.?”
“Well,” Teddy said, starting to soap her front, “I’ve got some work to do on a couple of gadgets.” Teddy had made a fortune inventing kitchen tools that were sold on late-night television. “Gotta keep the money tap running.”
“I won’t argue with you about that,” Lauren said. “I want to see the National Gallery and the Smithsonian. I’ve never been to Washington before.”
“There are enough museums and galleries to keep you busy for a year,” Teddy said. “Not that I think we’ll be here for a year. I know you get antsy if you’re too far from a beach for too long. I just want to be here long enough to throw Todd Bacon and his crew off the track.”
Todd Bacon, at that moment, was in San Diego fielding phone calls from his team, and he was baffled by the result. They had found three instances of Cessna 182 RG landings at West Coast general aviation airports, but each of them had been traced to owners who were obviously not Teddy Fay.
“You look puzzled,” his number two said.
“Aren’t you? Where the hell did he go?”
“Well, if he isn’t on the West Coast, that leaves forty-five other states where he could have landed. Oh, and did I mention Canada?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Todd said.
“Todd, if we don’t get a solid lead soon, they’re gonna pull the plug on us,” number two said. “We’re going to find ourselves in some South American jungle looking for drug factories, and I don’t like bugs and snakes.”
“I’m thinking,” Todd said, “I’m thinking.”
22
Stone, Dino, and Shelley turned up at Fair Sutherlin’s place fashionably late; they were the first ones there. Fair lived in a small, elegant apartment building on a broad avenue near Dupont Circle, and her space, its furnishings and pictures indicated an income of which her government salary was but a small part.
As Dino was introducing Shelley, two other couples arrived, and before those introductions had been made there were six couples present, including a network anchorman, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a right-wing Republican senator, each with a wife in tow. Everybody was terribly glad to see everybody else.
A young man in a white jacket took drink orders, and a young woman in a white jacket poured champagne for those who did not have another choice. They drank for forty minutes, then someone opened a pair of sliding doors, and the twelve took seats around a long, beautifully set table.
“Fair,” the senator’s wife said, “I don’t know how you have amassed so many beautiful things in your short life.”
“By the deaths of my parents and all four of my grandparents,” Fair replied. “I’m an only child, and I have three very complete sets of china, silver, and crystal, in opposing patterns. By the way, since Stone, Dino, and Shelley are new at my table, I should tell them about my one rule: no politics will be discussed.”
There were murmurs of assent, then there was complete silence for a little more than a minute.
“How ’bout those Redskins,” the anchorman offered.
“Not until next month,” Fair said.
The senator spoke up. “Stone, Dino, tell us about how your investigation is going.”
“First of all, Senator,” Stone said, “I am not shocked that you know about our investigation. Second, as you must know, we can’t discuss it before we have made our final report to the president, and maybe not even then.”
The columnist gave a snort. “I would imagine that the collective knowledge about your investigation by those present at this table amounts to very nearly everything you have learned so far. For instance, I hear that you had a conversation with the notorious Milly Hart yesterday.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Stone said, “but I would be interested to know why she is notorious.”
“Because she’s a high-priced hooker,” Dino said.